Rookie Boo Weekeley, a hard-awinging country boy, struggles with new courses and cold attitudes
By JOHN ROMANO, Times Sports Columnist
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 19, 2002
PALM HARBOR -- If you are not intrigued by his sneakers on the fairways or if you have little taste for the heap of tobacco in the corner of his mouth, then at least listen for the invitation in his voice.
It beckons past snooty stares and around stodgy ideals. Maybe not recognizable but somehow appealing. Like the aroma of an unfamiliar dessert.
"Hey," he says with a grin. Except his pronunciation of the word includes more vowels than you previously recall.
This is Boo Weekley. College dropout, country cracker, lovable goofball. He is the golfer you have never seen but always have wanted to meet.
He should be easy to spot during this weekend's Tampa Bay Classic. Look for the guy who wears rain pants on a sunny day and has been known to play a round in tennis shoes. If you run across a competitor on the 16th green telling his caddy a flatulence joke, you've probably found Boo.
In a world of like-minded golfers, Weekley is in a universe of his own. More country than country club. More comfortable on the back porch with the caddies than in the clubhouse with the players.
He has been on the tour less than a year and already has raised more eyebrows and turned up more noses than a pair of plaid slacks. Maybe it's because his style has generated a level of publicity disproportionate to his play. Or maybe because his outgoing nature is anathema around PGA clubhouses.
"It's pretty cutthroat out here," Weekley said. "Maybe I need to be a little more negative. If they don't say, 'Hey,' then you don't say, 'Hey.' But I've never been like that. I see someone new, I go up and say, 'Hey, how you doing? I'm Boo Weekley.' Around here, they just shoo you off. They don't care if you're here or not. That kind of gets to me."
He is not a fish out of water. Maybe just a guppy among sharks. An innocent who does not understand why the PGA Tour asked him to quit wearing camouflage pants in tournaments. A romantic who wonders why Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson aren't sitting around rapping with him and the caddies.
Weekley, 29, got serious about golf in high school because it was a way to get out of class. His attitude hasn't changed much since then.
He stumbled into a PGA career after deciding he didn't much like his other options. Weekley put in time picking cotton and soybeans on his grandparents' farm near the Panhandle town of Milton. He also did a stint as a hydro-blaster at a Pensacola chemical plant where he would wear rain gear and a bulletroof vest for protection and then be lowered into steaming hot tanks with a high-pressure hose to clean up.
All of that came after not quite surviving a couple of restless semesters at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Ga.
"I was happy to get out of high school, much less college," said Weekley, whose father owns a pharmacy in Milton. "I went to college for about a year and did a lot of partying and deer hunting. I was spending more money than I had. I had to take loans out from different banks to pay off my credit card bills. So I said, 'Phooey on this. I'm going to the house.'
"I got home and stayed around the house for about two months. Daddy finally said, 'You got some options here son, but you ain't going to lay around this house. You can get you a job or go back to school.' "
It was a few years ago when Weekley began playing regularly on the mini tours. With his fishing poles and shotgun in the back of his truck, he carved out a decent living traveling the south in below-radar events.
If he was destined for something greater, it wasn't immediately obvious. He bombed in his first two attempts at the PGA Qualifying Tournament, failing to even get an exemption for the Buy.com tour.
So it came as a shock when he returned to qualifying school last winter and finished high enough to bypass the Buy.com tour to earn his PGA Tour card.
It was, simultaneously, the best and worst breaks of his career.
Weekley was unprepared for the big time. He acknowledges a year on the Buy.com tour probably would have served him better.
He is traveling more than ever, playing unfamiliar courses and trying to learn course management on the run. He hits the heck out of the ball off the tee -- he is third on the tour in driving distance and fourth in distance/accuracy -- but has struggled upon reaching the greens.
At 201st on the money list, he likely is heading back to qualifying school. Even then, his place on the Buy.com tour would not be secure.
He survived, along with his wife and infant son, on the $50,000 or so he would make on the mini tour. It's been harder on the PGA Tour, even though he has earned around $70,000 because expenses are higher.
"It's been rough. It's been kind of heartbreaking, to tell you the truth," he said. "I've honestly felt like I've let my family down more than I've let myself down."
It hasn't helped that Weekley, at times, has felt ostracized. He has a few friends among players, including high school teammate Heath Slocum, but has gotten little encouragement from others.
He has seen their looks. The condescending stares of those with little tolerance for individuality. He does not want to change the way they live and, so, he wonders why they want him to change the way he lives.
"The way it is around here, it's just not me," Weekley said. "Maybe a few years down the road I can understand it and make it work for me.
"Maybe when I go home this year and I'm sitting in a tree stand, maybe I'll figure out what I need to do to make myself better out here. To make myself more appropriate out here, I reckon is what I need. But if it was up to me, I couldn't care less. If you show up in britches with holes in 'em, who cares? I just want to be me."